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WHEN it comes to the legal system in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, there’s not much I agree with. Come to think of it, I’m not too keen on anything else about the two regimes, either.
Not that the citizens of those esteemed Muslim democracies (I’m joking) have much say in what’s going on.
But just how democratic are countries like the UK and Spain? Do Brits really have a say in everything that matters – particularly when it involves contentious issues where government and public opinion are at odds?
Like bringing back the death penalty.
Successive governments have known from their research that a national referendum on the return of capital punishment for predatorial killers like Levi Bellfield would produce a massive ‘hang the scum’ vote.

Levi Bellfield

Rage
And that’s where the British system ceases to be democratic. Because David Cameron’s government, like the Brown, Blair, Major and Thatcher regimes before them, think they know better than the voters.
So Bellfield will merely spend his life in jail at our expense.
My heart bled for his victime Millie Dowler’s family in their understandable rage following Bellfield’s conviction.
‘‘In my eyes, justice is an eye for an eye,’’ said Millie’s sister Gemma. ‘‘You brutally murder someone then you pay the ultimate price …a life for a life. So in my eyes no real justice has been done’’.
And so say the vast majority of those who think political correctness sucks. Which is just about everyone I know!
Gemma made it abundantly clear that she wanted Bellfield six feet under.
But however desirable that may be, it would not politically correct. Because it would impinge on Bellfield’s human rights.
Human rights? Since when are vermin like Bellfield human? And let’s not call him an animal because, unlike him, no animal is innately evil. Ask the average Brit and at least 75 per cent will say this particular piece of filth has lost his right to live.
Likewise, the likes of Ian Brady, Myra Hindley, Ian Huntley and Harold Shipman should have been executed as soon as they were convicted. It’s all very well for the Lord Longfords of this world to cry out at the lynch-mob mentality of the masses, but public opinion still seems to favour the Old Testament philosophy of an eye for an eye.
It may be PC to take the New Testament route and turn the other cheek – but if it leads to being whacked twice as hard, what’s the point?
I took a straw poll among friends the other day and whilst a majority favoured bringing back the death penalty, the one proviso everyone demanded was that guilt must be established, not beyond reasonable doubt as in the past, but beyond ALL doubt.
Rage
I would also confine the ultimate penalty to murders involving premeditated evil – which would exclude crimes of passion.
Isn’t it ironic that bringing back capital punishment is so popular with those who remember, not only the heinous crimes of the Crippins and Christies, but also the horrendous mistakes when convicted ‘murderers’ were hanged and then found to be totally innocent?
Discussing this topic is, of course, largely pointless, because Britain will never restore the death penalty.
Neither will Spain, which in 2009 became one of the last nations in Europe to dismantle its gallows completely.
Indeed, the death penalty remains in only two of Europe’s 50 nations, Latvia and Belarus. And the Latvians retain it only for crimes during wartime.
I’m no fan of the gung-ho Americans, but at least they listen to the people (even to the point of electing an idiot like George W Bush and half-destroying the world as a consequence).
The Yanks executed 47 murderers last year with Texas the most prolific and enthusiastic state.
The problem is that our friends across the Pond often fail to understand the difference between a life sentence and a death sentence.
I mean, serving 20 years on death row and THEN being hanged is a bit steep.
But even 20 eyes for an eye would be too lenient a punishment for the likes of Levi Bellfield.

’Allo ’allo, a very good moaning to you all . . .

Until May 2011, I was a semi-retired Fleet Street staff sub-editor and reporter (news, sport and features) living in the Costa Blanca, where I was the self-styled Grumpy Old Gran of the local expat press. Now I'm back doing the lot full-time - as Editor of The Courier, a new weekly newspaper (www.thecourier.es). Despite my grumpy columns, I invariably have funny turns while I'm writing which will either make you laugh or cringe. Clever, corny or just a quirkyt sense of humour? That's for you to decide...

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Flying the flag for Spain on World Cup Final night with my pal John Moynihan